


OUR PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS 



An Address 



BY 



HON. DAVID J. HILL, 

THE FIRST ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE 
OF THE UNITED STATES, 



BEFORE 

THE UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 
January 26, 1901. 



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OUR PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS. 



OUR PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS 



An Address 



BY 



HON. DAVID J. HILL, 

THE FIRST ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE 
OF THE UNITED STATES, 



BEFORE 

THE UNION LEAGUE OF PHILADELPHIA, 
January 26, 1901. 






'■X'xL. .sXviA.. 



^ 



OUR PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS. 



President Darlington, in introducing the speaker, said : 
Gentlemen, the position of the United States in the family of 
nations will not, in my judgment, be determined by a recourse to 
arms, or by an arrogant assumption of what we may conceive 
to be our right to demand, but rather will it be determined by 
our attitude before the nations of the world, and by wise and 
prudent legislation. So rapid and radical has been the change 
in our national aifairs during the past three years that our foreign 
relations demand, and will require, the most serious considera- 
tion, not only upon the part of the legislative and executive de- 
partments of our government, but upon the part of all the 
people of our country. Upon Congress rests the responsibility 
of enacting the laws ; upon the President rests the responsibility 
to see that the laws are faithfully observed, and upon us, who are 
citizens of this great Republic, rests the grave responsibility and 
duty to use our influence to secure wise, prudent and equitable 
legislation. The first step to this end is to secure the election to 
our legislative halls of men ot unquestioned probity, whose 
ability and honesty of purpose is recognized by all the people of 
the land. The near future must and will determme the place of 
the United States among the great powers of the world. So 
marvellous has been the development of this nation during the 

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past century, and more especially during the past twenty-five 
years, that the United States has become one of the great powers 
of the world, whose voice will be heard, and must be listened to, 
in the consideration and settlement of every international ques- 
tion. "VVe are great enough to correct an error if one has been 
made ; we are strong enough to insist upon our rights through- 
out the world. Gentlemen, let us be sure of the righteousness 
of our position, and there will be no question as to our position 
in the family of nations. 

The subject which our distinguished guest has selected for his 
address this evening is one of the most important before the 
country to-day. Holding as he does one of the highest posi- 
tions in our government, which brings before his official notice 
every change and movement in our foreign relations. Dr. Hill is 
peculiarly qualified to speak to us upon so important a question. 
I therefore have very great pleasure in presenting to you the 
Assistant Secretary of State of the United States, the Honorable 
David J. Hill. 



Honorable David J. Hill,: 

Mr. President and gentlemen of The Union League : The 
patriotic name you bear and the principles which have given ex- 
istence to your organization seem to be my sufficient warrant for 
believing that whatever vitally affects the interests of our com- 
mon country lies very near to your hearts. In accepting the 
great honor you have done me, in inviting me to address you, it 
has seemed to me, therefore, that it would not be inappro- 
priate to tlie hour and the occasion to speak of the place recently 
taken by our country among the nations of the earth — a place 



rendered possible now for the first time as the result of a long 
historic process brought at last to its culmination. 

For long ages men lived apart, separated by mountains and 
oceans, isolated, unknown and hostile among themselves, and 
nations were impossible. War, conquest, subjugation, slavery, 
despotism— these were the cruel instruments by which ancient 
States were founded; and it is only in recent times that nation- 
ality—the child of mutual devotion to common purposes, shared 
by great masses of men— has been able to extend human organi- 
zation beyond the narrow confines established by local arbitrary 

power. 

All the progress of the world has tended to unify mankind. 
The clearing of forests, the search for subterranean treasures, the 
tunneling of mountains, the redemption of arid wastes, the flight 
of ships over the sea, have all brought men closer together. 
Navigation has carried adventurers into wider seas; commerce 
has united the sympathies of far distant peoples ; invention has 
abridged distance, annihilated time and rendered world-wide 
publicity almost instantaneous. International credit has inter- 
laced the interests of widely-separated countries, and even our 
philanthropy has become international, the floatmg hospitals of 
Russia turning their kindly prows towards South Africa, and the 
red crescent of the Turk claiming its right to humanity and 
mercy alongside the red cross of the Christian in the great parlia- 
ment of peace recently assembled at the Hague. (Applause.) 

It is, gentlemen, one world in which we live, and not a mere 
juxtaposition of diiferent worlds, and our science, our commerce, 
our literature and our politics have all become cosmopolitan. 

Three times in the course of human history the world has 
changed its front, each time bringing into one another's presence 



8 

larger and more powerful groups of nations. First upon the 
Nile and the Euphrates rested the termini of civilization, halting 
as if uncertain of its future, glancing alternately at the Persian 
Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea, through centuries of suspense 
and indecision, while the long white caravans of early commerce 
solemnly moved across the plains of Mesopotamia and the Arabian 
Desert, opening the first rude highways of trade between the East 
and the West ; then, turning sharply seaward to begin its w^est- 
ward journey round the globe. Tyre, Sidon, Carthage and the 
Isles of the ^gean became the forefront of the world. Asia 
Minor, the Greek mainland, Sicily and Italy entered into life at 
the touch of trade, and passed out of barbarism into civilization, 
while the Mediterranean Sea became the focal point of human 
development, the storm centre of the great imperial struggle 
raging on the three continents that compose its shores. 

For centuries the Mediterranean continues to be the centre of 
the world, and Asia, Africa and Europe contend with each other 
for supremacy on this land-locked sea. The Hansa cities rise to 
wealth and prosperity and extend their commerce to the north, 
but the source of their wealth continues to be the Eastern trade. 
Venice, rising from the sea and become the Queen of the Adri- 
atic, is long the most prosperous maritime power in the world, 
while England, a lone island in the northern seas, has still no 
dream of empire. Europe, inspired by the migrations on land 
and sea, when the Crusaders poured into Asia to rescue the birth- 
spot of Christianity from the infidel, is still building her great 
monarchies on the ruins of the middle ages, when a Genoese 
sailor, under the patronage of Spain, impelled by a larger vision, 
turns the prows of his little fleet into tlic darkness of the west- 
ern seas, to find another continent in the search for a shorter road 



to India. Returning, Columbus has changed the front of the 
world once more, the Atlantic becomes the highway of nations, 
and the New World is added to the trophies of mankind. 

Henceforth, all the force and energy of Europe are directed 
toward the sea, and the maritime nations are eager to plow the 
ocean with their navies, and establish their colonies throughout 
the globe. A new Spain, a new France and a new England 
come into being, to continue the struggles of the Old World in 
striving for the primacy of the New. A slender line of colonies 
is scattered along the Atlantic shore of North America, taking 
possession of the Broad middle zone. The Spaniards cannot de- 
stroy it on the south, the French cannot drive it into the sea from 
the north and the northwest; for it carries in its blood the domes- 
tic and civic virtues born in the forests of Germany, and the lib- 
erties wrested from the hands of powerful kings by centuries of 
struggle. Sturdy, industrious, self-reliant, the ever-increasing^ 
stream of population presses westward, ever westward, building 
camps and cabins in the wilderness. The story of westward 
migration across the American Continent is the most brilliant 
chapter in the history of civilization (applause), the most stu- 
pendous exhibition of energy in the long struggle of man with 
nature. 

Independence gained, the great Northwest Territory ceded to- 
the United States by Great Britain, the self-governing colonies 
confederated into a Union, and the whole vast realm ruled by 
supreme act of sovereignty in the name of the people, an irre- 
pressible race crosses the Rocky Mountains, or reaches the golden 
shores of California by the slow ships which circumnavigate 
South America. The natural resources of the Pacific slope at- 
tract adventurous men, bold, fearless, indomitable, who, without 



to 

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etiquette or formality of any kind, take possession of the conti- 
nent's western rim. 

It is needless to discuss the distinction between military occu- 
pation, conquest and peaceable cession, for these are all unim- 
portant in the presence of the one controlling fact that strong 
men have arrived, capable of redeeming nature, able and willing 
to plant laws, justice and political institutions where but yesterday 
wild vegetation and still wilder races grew and perished in the 
rank luxuriance of a primeval age. 

Foremost in this race across the continent, voluntary exiles 
from civilization, fearless, indomitable, the new race looks back 
with a sort of terror at the awful spaces of plain and mountain 
which separate them from the eastern home ; but the whole vast 
area is soon to be bound together and made one, held in the in- 
separable bonds of a federated statehood, sealed by the blood of 
the whole Union, including that of men who came from the Pacific 
slope — the awful price of national union — wliile the great trans- 
continental railroads, that traverse the prairies and cross the 
mountains, prove that the United States has mastered its domain 
at last, and clasped it together with bauds of steel from ocean to 
ocean. 

This great work accomplished, each citizen becomes intent upon 
his private task, unconscious of the changes which time and toil 
have wrought ; but, still farther westward, following the track of 
the sinking sun far out into the Pacific, Americans continue to 
wander, building their homes where eternal summer smiles upon 
the islands that float between the ocean and the stars. Soon the 
nation is startled by the cry of kindred beyond the sea, claiming 
the protection of the United States for the fragile republic of 
Hawaii, brought into being in a night, and asking to share the 



11 

flag and the destini&s of the American people. This is an im- 
pressive moment, and the national government hesitates to extend 
the sovereignty of the nation over a spot of earth so remote from 
its continental boundaries, thereby advancing the frontiers of the 
United States two thousand miles into the western ocean. 

The people of the United States have had no thought of over- 
leaping continental boundaries, have had no thought of far dis- 
tant islands, except that they would be a burden and a care, but 
a series of grievances becoming intolerable, the inexplicable inci- 
dent of the blowing up of one of our battle-ships, interpreted as 
an insult and a challenge, drives the United States into a war 
with Spain, and the new and untried navy is bidden to do its 
work. The inhabitants of the Atlantic seaboard towns shudder 
with dread at the thought of some destructive Armada looming 
up out of the mysterious mists of the sea to lay them waste, and 
peaceful cottagers dream of invasion on the unprotected shores 
of New England, when, suddenly, in the early hours of a May 
morning, a squadron of American ships quietly steams into 
Manila Bay and, before the sun has set, the world understands 
that the front of the world has changed once more and the 
Pacific Ocean has become the centre of the world. (Applause.) 

I say, gentlemen, the centre of the world, for that is always 
the centre where the new work calls, where the unsolved prob- 
lems rise, and where the energies of civilization gather to com- 
plete their unfinished task. Upon the shores of this vast ocean, 
on which nearly one half of the earth's inhabitants are distri- 
buted, the natural outlet for their industries, towards which 
their converging lines of interest are directed, and the medium 
of their intercourse, is destined to become the most magnificent 
meeting-place of nations known in the history of the world. 



LofC. 



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Already more than a hundred lines of railroad run from the 
Pacific^ bearing the products of every zone, and when the great 
trans-Siberian line of Russia is completed, a journey from Pari& 
to Japan, including the sea passage, can be made in fifteen days. 
A dozen lines of steamships, many of them operating nearly a 
hundred vessels, now connect the ports of America with Asia 
and Australia, where in a former century but a single sailing 
vessel each year crossed the Pacific from Manila to Acapulco. 
Several trans-Pacific lines of cable are already in contemplation, 
to complete the telegraphic unity of the world, which already 
has one hundred and seventy thousand miles of submarine com- 
munication — nearly seven times the girdle of the globe. The 
future commerce of that vast ocean is beyond all human com- 
putation. The annual trade has already reached the enormous 
aggregate of five thousand million dollars, while that of Japan 
alone, which has doubled within ten years, is two hundred mil- 
lions. 

Awakening from a wonderful dream to a still more marvel- 
lous reality, the United States has emerged from the war with 
Spain, to find itself one of the greatest oceanic powers in the 
world (applause), possessing the finest port in the Southern 
Pacific, the Hawaiian Islands, little Guam and the Philippine 
archipelago, while her continental coast line of five thousand 
miles is itself almost one fourth of the entire Pacific water 
front. In Alaska alone — poor, despised Alaska — (laughter), 
which has never excited any sentiment but our contempt or our 
ridicule, according to the temper of our minds — in Alaska 
alone, Great Britain and Ireland, the twenty-six States of the 
German Empire, and the whole of France, can be delimited 
without overlaj)ping its borders. As if to rebuke our hick of 



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appreciation of a great possession, a competent man of science, 
after personal inspection of the country, declares that Alaska, 
the principal part of it, is a much better country than parts of 
Great Britain and Norway, and even parts of Sweden. If we 
accept the principle laid down by Montesquieu, which I believe 
you will receive as a true one, that countries are not cultivated 
because of their fertility, but because of their liberty, Alaska — 
poor, despised Alaska — may yet become not only the habitation 
of millions of happy people, but the seat of great and powerful 
States. (Applause.) 

No longer a federation of little commonwealths scattered along 
the border of the Atlantic, but a great and powerful nation, com- 
manding the breadth of a continent, and ruling far distant 
islands, what is to be the part of our country in the movements 
w^hich are bringing about great changes in the political and 
moral geography of the world? Shall we repudiate all this 
glorious history ? Shall we escape from the control of those un- 
seen forces that have thrust us into the forefront of the world ? 
Shall we accept the counsel of those who oppose the extension 
of American sovereignty beyond the frontiers of the continent ? 
Above all, shall we accept the principle of those who desire that 
the American flag shall be lowered before the standards of a 
petty and self-constituted chieftain, who has inflamed a single 
one of eighty-four tribes to insurrection, without ever being or- 
ganized to constitute a State, without ever being a homogeneous 
people, and without ever possessing public responsibility ? That 
is a " burning question " which I shall not have the mdiscretion 
to answer. (Laughter.) When the archives of the nation have 
told their whole story, it will be seen that the treaty of Paris 
was not a hard bargain in the interests of trade, but the charter 



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of liberty to twelve millions of human beings, brought under the 
protection of a flag able to defend them from foreign aggression 
and internal anarchy. (Applause.) The only conceivable chance 
that self-government could ever have in the Philippine Islands 
for centuries of time was secured when the sovereignty of those 
islands passed from Spain to the United States. (Applause.) 
In the name of just administration, in the name of international 
tranquillity, in the name of self-government itself, whatever the 
American people may decide to do, they cannot honorably lower 
our flag until order has been established, and the world con- 
vinced that the President expressed the real purpose of the 
American people when he sent to them by his first Philippine 
Commissioners his pledge of protection, and the richest blessings 
of a liberating rather than a conquering nation. (Applause.) 

And now, gentlemen, what will be the effect of this new posi- 
tion which we have taken among the nations of the earth upon 
ourselves at home ? I think the most obvious certainty con- 
nected with the present situation is that we are to look hence- 
forth to an era of unexampled commercial development. Hav- 
ing solved, as we have, the problems of mechanical production 
and of inland transportation to a point where the chief necessity 
lies in the discovery of new markets for the disposition of our 
products, at this happy moment the broad gateways of the Far 
East seem to swing wide open, and we find ourselves standing 
face to face with opportunity. This new era of commercial de- 
velopment which is about to dawn is only the beginning of the 
fulfillment of predictions belonging to the infancy of oiu- Re- 
public. In 1830, Alexis De Toqueville, whose great work on 
" Democracy in America " many of you, I have no doubt, studied 
in college or elsewhere, utters words which I beg leave to quote. 



15 

Writing in 1830, De Toqueville says, "The Americans now 
transport to their own shores nine tentlis of the European pro- 
ducts which they consume, and they also bring three fourths of 
the exports of the New World to the European consumer. Na- 
tions, as well as men," he continues, " almost always develop the 
prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. 
When I contemplate the manner in which the Americans prose- 
cute commerce, the advantages which aid them, and the success 
of their undertakings, I cannot help believing that they will 
one day be the first maritime power of the world. (Applause.) 
They are born to rule the seas," he concludes, "as the Romans 
were to conquer the world." 

One of the next steps in our national development will doubt- 
less be the creation of a mercantile marine for foreign trade. I 
say the creation of a mercantile marine for foreign trade, for 
since 1861, when our total steam tonnage exceeded that of the 
British Empire, we have permitted our exports to be carried 
chiefly in foreign vessels, and to-day our foreign tonnage, our 
registered steam tonnage, is only one third of what it was when 
the Civil War began, while our commerce has increased three- 
fold. It seems to me that the one yet unaccomplished task in 
effacing the consequences of that Civil War, during which Great 
Britain more than doubled her carrying trade, while our mer- 
chant vessels almost vanished from the ocean, consists in the re- 
constitution of that carrying trade which was lost at that time 
(applause) ; and I believe I am not far afield in saying, gentle- 
men, that as long as there is any consequence of the Civil War 
uneffaced and unredeemed, The Union League still has work to 
do. (Applause.) 

One of the next steps in our national development will be the 



16 

consolidation of our national domain, both continental and in- 
sular, in the shortening of the routes to market by the construc- 
tion of an international and interoceanic waterway connecting the 
two oceans that bathe our eastern and western shores. (Ap- 
plause.) This, gentlemen, will be our great contribution to the 
highways of civilization. No nation ought to place any obstruc- 
tion to the accomplishment of that task (applause), for it is em- 
phatically our peculiar task, and in accomplishing it we make no 
menace against the peace of the world. If we build it, we shall 
doubtless build it first for ourselves, and then for all mankind, 
who will profit by it, and our interests will require that it be 
the scene and sign of peace and not of war. 

Finally, all those new domains that have come, and are yet 
to come, into our national expanse will enable us to be more and 
more completely what I am sure every American desires his 
coimtry to become — a great and powerful peacemaker among the 
nations. We sometimes speak of commerce as if it were essen- 
tially sordid and selfish, and overlook its beneficent aspects. A 
distinguished moralist has said, " Trade is a plant which grows 
wherever there is peace, as soon as there is peace, and as long 
as there is peace." It is the great peacemaker, and whenever it 
leads the way, there the gifts of civilization may follow. Al- 
ready this great nation has stretched its wand out over the broad 
Pacific, and invited the nations of the earth to make a peaceful 
and equitable compact in the interests of universal trade. The 
transformation of China will be the work of the coming century, 
the century upon which we have entered ; but the lines of that 
development must very quickly be determined. So far as the 
voice of this nation has been heard at the council board of 
nations, it has spoken bravely and with no uncertain sound for 



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humanity and brotherhood, for magnanimity and justice, and 
never for partition and plunder. Unless the great Eastern ques- 
tion is settled in a just and equitable manner, the temporary 
makeshifts for a settlement will be followed by awful tragedy 
and the terrible penalty of misguided policy. This nation has 
indicated the path in which safety lies, by invoking solemn 
treaties, which accord to us and to other nations equal rights, and 
in proposing that the nations recognize first each other's rights, 
and also the rights of China. (Applause.) 

There are those who say that along with the extension of our 
borders, a radical change has been produced in our national char- 
acter, and that we are drifting into dangerous currents which 
may eventually deteriorate our national life. If this is so, then 
all the triumphs of our material development are but a cause for 
lamentation ; but it is not so, for American life and character 
were never nobler and purer than they are to-day. (Applause.) 
Any form of expansion that does not include the extension and 
diffusion of that which is most deejtly characteristic of our 
national life, of that which we are proud to call our " American- 
ism," is unworthy of the energies and the ambition of the Amer- 
ican people. Now what is that Americanism, which we cannot 
afford to abandon or disregard without casting the precious pearl 
of our inheritance into the sea ? It is the principle that no 
policy can be tolerated which does not confirm and encourage the 
development of all those mental and moral faculties which give 
force and valor to the individual man. (Applause.) It is the 
idea of the harmonious and generous co-operation in promoting 
the general prosperity, without regard to class, creed, section or 
racial origin. (Applause.) It is the reverence for ideals of 
equity and justice, incorporated into the law of the land, and 



18 

made operative by the combined force of society, supported by 
the glad and willing obedience of every member. Liberty is 
sweet, but it is not the sole cause of our national development. 
Fraternity is noble, but it is not the only bond of our civic 
coherence. Deeper than liberty and fraternity lies the splendid 
conception of an imperative moral order, at once the fertile source 
of our personal rights and the compelling force of our individual 

. and national duties. Without this fundamental bond, men are 
but self-conscious atoms, and societies are but the drifting vapors 
that skirt the hills in the morning, but vanish before noon. 
The greatness of America lies in the deep-seated conviction 

» of the American people that they mean to do what is right. 
(Applause.) The way is not always easy, and we may diifer as 
to where to find it ; but if there is one thing that may be said of 
the American people, it is that they will not suffer any great evil 
or injustice, capable of repression by human power, to have a 
permanent existence in their jurisdiction. (Applause.) Slavery 
was a dark spot upon the American conscience ; but the hand of 
Abraham Lincoln, sustained by the better sentiment of his coun- 
try, swept it away. Polygamy was a reproach to the honor of 
the nation ; but, behold, it is gone, and its apostles have vanished. 
Rapine and butchery desolated the fair island of Cuba, but the 
great guns of our squadron thundered "Let us have peace," and we 
have it. " If you do not trust the people," said a great orator, 
" you march into night. If you cannot trust the people, whom can 
you trust?" Presidents and cabinets and councils are never so 
wise as when they lend their ears to the voice of the people — not 
the vociferations of mere partisans, but the calm expression of 
the intelligence of the nation, voiced in the measured, deliberate 
conclusions of an enlightened people. (Applause.) 



19 

As the mariner, when out of sight of land, looks up for guidance 
to the sun and stars, so a nation in great emergencies returns in- 
stinctively to cardinal principles. Aiming at peace as the essen- 
tial condition for the enjoyment of liberty, at order as the one 
fundamental necessity of social existence, at justice as the univer- 
sal right of human nature, the country knows that in contending 
for these, and in opposing all that would prevent or delay them, 
it is acting in the spirit of all the good and wise who have gone 
before or who will follow after. If any government can rise to 
the level of great human interests and secure the rights of hu- 
manity, it is that of the sovereign people, capable of sitting in 
judgment upon its public servants, and holding them responsible 
for their official acts ; therefore, wherever the flag of our coun- 
try floats on land or sea, there is the genius of the American 
people to uphold it as the symbol and the pledge of liberty and 
law. (Applause.) In the divine charter of humanity there are 
no prescriptions of latitude and longitude ; the boundaries of 
nations do not limit the jurisdiction of ethical principles, and 
even the vast oceanic spaces present no barrier to human rights ; 
for there, as everywhere, the eternal laws which Infinite Power 
has interfused with nature press forward toward their own ful- 
fillment in the unfinished work of human development. (Ap- 
plause.) 



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